filters

Now the KIND Foundation is trying to bring more diversity to Facebook feeds — so people can try to understand each other better. Its “Pop Your Bubble” tool, …matches Facebook users with at least 10 people who have a different political perspective, and who live in another part of the country or represent a different generation.

The tool is one of several that have appeared in recent months to help social media users become more exposed to other perspectives. Flip Feed, a chrome extension designed my MIT researchers, allows people to see what a Twitter feed looks like for someone with different political leanings. And Escape your Bubble, also a Chrome extension, inserts posts in your Facebook feed with a news article representing a differing political perspective. The posts are deliberately upbeat and friendly, intended to contrast with the way opposing viewpoints often are presented on-line, via argumentative comments.

Twitter might have finally found some motivation to deal with its troll problem. Three and a half billion motivations, really.

The company has spent the past few months courting potential buyouts from companies including Google, Disney, and enterprise software firm Salesforce.

That last suitor came closest of them all to actually making an offer, apparently driven by the potential of Twitter to provide an in-house social network that could be mined for data, used as a casual communication channel between customers and corporations, and tweaked into a passable professional networking service.

But in the end, it passed. And part of the reason, according to CNBC’s Jim Cramer, is the company’s long-running problem dealing with trolls. “What’s happened is, a lot of the bidders are looking at people with lots of followers and seeing the hatred,” Cramer said. “Twitter says ‘listen, we have a filter’. I mean, the filter filters out a very small amount of the haters, and I know that the haters reduce the value of the company.”

Excerpt from this article (Brooke and Elsbitch are the handles of the two teens whom the reporter interviews), this whole article is full of fascinating digital behaviours:

ME: How long have you had Snapchat?
BROOKE: My new account? About a month and a half.
ME: New account?
BROOKE: Yeah, I didn’t like my old name, so I made a new account.
ME: So you lost all your friends…?
BROOKE: Not really. I used to have about 215 and now I’m at around 180 or 190.

…

ME: Tell me what your day is like on Snapchat.
BROOKE: When I wake up, I have about 40 snaps from friends. I just roll through and respond to them.
ME: How do you respond? Like, “haha good one, Elsbitch”?
BROOKE: No conversations…it’s mostly selfies. Depending on the person, the selfie changes. Like, if it’s your best friend, you make a gross face, but if it’s someone you like or don’t know very well, it’s more regular.
ME: I’ve seen how fast you do these responses… How are you able to take in all that information so quickly?
BROOKE: I don’t really see what they send. I tap through so fast. It’s rapid fire.

…

ME: What is a streak?
BROOKE: You don’t know what a streak is? It’s when you send a snap to one of your friends on consecutive days. You have to make sure to respond every day with a snap or you break the streak.

…

BROOKE: Don’t Snapchat boys that you like first — wait until they Snapchat you.
ELSBITCH: You need to have more than 150 views on your Story.

…

ELSBITCH: Don’t overload your Story. Nobody wants to sit and watch five videos. One video MAX.
BROOKE: If you’re weird, people will judge you. People don’t care as much as you do in that moment. Also, EVERYONE looks at Cosmo on Discover. If it’s funny, they share it.
ELSBITCH: Don’t reply to weird people. You could reply once, but definitely don’t get a streak.
BROOKE: Get trophies. It’s not a huge deal, but friends like to compare trophies.
ELSBITCH: Take a selfie on your friends’ Snapchats and add your handle in the text to request more friends. Still, don’t be desperate for followers.

It’s easy to forget sometimes that social media is a collection of hand picked moments. What we see has usually gone through a few edits to look the way it does. It isn’t always the full picture and it shouldn’t be a benchmark we set for our own lives.

#NoFilterFeb is a challenge to detox your Instagram of all the filters that have become a default go to.